This time it’s different: Sesh and Shannon
Abstract:
This chapter provides further perspectives on the impact of family background and geography on access to higher education. In it we present the stories of Sesh and Shannon, a woman and a man who both initially commenced university as school leavers but did not proceed to graduation. Their comments show how their subsequent experiences led to their current, successful enrolment as mature, self-reliant learners, proceeding without the assistance of university support services. We use their stories to focus on the implications for retention of students from diverse backgrounds. We consider whether Sesh and Shannon could have been assisted to continue during their earlier attempts at study, and what this means for your own practice.
Introduction
In this chapter we introduce Sesh and Shannon, a woman and a man with rural backgrounds and similar pathways to higher education: both commenced university study as school leavers but did not finish their courses. Their reasons for discontinuation were different. Sesh made three very brief attempts to begin a university course but withdrew each time, despite having been a good student at secondary school. She considered that her efforts at secondary school related more to escaping pressures at home than to natural ability. She was the first in her family to attend university and this, together with other factors such as her rural background, contributed to her withdrawal from university. Shannon regarded himself as a good student throughout his schooling and his first attempt at higher education continued into the second year of study but ceased when he became a parent at a young age.
Sesh and Shannon then worked for several years before becoming students again. For Sesh, this involved finding a clearer sense of direction in her life and overcoming family pressures, though before her success in her current course she reluctantly completed another degree. Shannon’s sense of direction also became clearer before he returned to study. He was motivated by the need for qualifications to increase his income and, with a partner and two young children, by the need to ‘set myself up’. Like Sesh, he returned to study via another course, though for him it was a positive experience which enabled him to meet prerequisites for the course he eventually completed.
As with the stories of Miranda and Rochelle, Sesh and Shannon throw light on a range of factors influencing the success in higher education of students from diverse backgrounds. You might consider the implications for managing and supporting student diversity that emerge from Sesh’s journey, particularly relating to strategies she put in place to overcome adverse factors from her background. Or you may find it helpful to consider the implications for other students of the detailed information Shannon provided about how he combined his study, work and family responsibilities, and managed to finance his university studies.
Like Miranda and Rochelle, neither Sesh nor Shannon depended on university services for support in successfully completing their degrees. Sesh’s peers were her primary source of support, while for Shannon support came mainly from his workplace and his family. You could think about what this means for managing and supporting student diversity in higher education. In particular, you might consider what their stories tell us about retention of students from diverse backgrounds, as this will be the focus of the implications that we address later in the chapter. If you had encountered one of these students during their initial attempts at university study, is there anything you could have done to prevent their withdrawal? Or were the factors adversely affecting their continuation outside the control of university staff?
Sesh’s story
Pathway to higher education
Sesh was a young woman in her twenties when she enrolled in the course that she successfully completed. She was the first in her family to attend university.
Family background
Sesh has a younger brother and her mother is from a small island nation. Gendered stereotypes impacted on her family’s expectations of her. In her primary school years, ‘[t]here was a lot of expectation on my brother to perform really well. There wasn’t so much on me.’ The attitudes of both of her parents reflected these traditional gender roles:
[My mother had] … a really strong expectation that whatever he [my father] says goes … my Dad is very strong and has always been the sort of person where he’s had to rely on himself. So making sure that my brother had those skills … was very important for him. Whereas me, he probably thought … I should be following my mother’s role. Like it’s the Mum’s job to look after the daughter …
As a result, ‘it’s not like I was ignored – it’s just … do what you want’. All Sesh wanted to do was ride horses.
Her life changed when her parents separated just before the start of secondary school:
… my brother lived with my Mum for a while, so it was just me and my Dad. And because we lived in a country town then, I was given a horse to look after … So I had the horse … but … coming home from school, I needed to be home at a certain time. If I wasn’t … I was in a lot of trouble. And I usually had to be inside the door … straight after school … So, yeah, it was just me and my horse and my Dad.
Further changes occurred when her brother moved back home, and then she acquired a stepmother who ‘wasn’t very nice’:
… while it was just me, him and [my brother] it was … all right … we learnt to get along. Because Dad was always so hard it was … a matter of working out how to compromise with him and stuff like that. But when she [my stepmother] … entered the picture … she was supposed to be the person that we negotiated with. Not with him any more. And she wasn’t up for negotiation. She would say what she said and that was it. She … [went] to my Dad with a different story. So I learnt … at that point, to play by her rules.
Sesh began to work hard and achieve well at secondary school to avoid the problems at home.
Educational experiences
Sesh began primary school at a ‘big school’ in the city but then moved to the country. The experience of a big school ‘meant that I was used to having lots of people around’ with the later result that going to university ‘was still confronting, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been’.
Sesh did not recall much about her primary school days, or what she wanted to do when she grew up:
… there was no real stress at all. I wasn’t an outstanding student or anything like that … I don’t think I … lagged behind – but I certainly wasn’t up with the main group … I just wanted a horse. That was my main focus all the way through primary school and a lot of the way through high school. That’s all I wanted was a horse.
But she remembered differences in the expectations and aspirations of children at her city and country primary schools:
… in the city … [t]hey had dreams, whereas in the country … you’re expected to get married and have kids and become a farmer’s wife or something like that.
Due to the changes in her family life, secondary school became very important to Sesh for social support. She worked hard:
… because I didn’t want to get too involved with what was going on with family, the main excuse I had was to do my homework. So when I didn’t have a horse, or when there was no horse there, I would be staying in my room and I would be doing homework in there, just to avoid everything else.
Her father also placed a lot of emphasis on her academic progress:
And my Dad [would say] … ‘Why didn’t you get an A + for science and why didn’t you get an A + for maths?’ So he was really maths and science focused … so I just excelled at that, because … I had to – if you didn’t, you got into a lot of trouble for it … I wasn’t a high achiever through being intelligent. I was a high achiever just because I put the time and the effort in ….
Sesh’s achievements at secondary school then increased her parents’ expectations of her, which was a change from their expectations in her primary school years:
My Mum was very much, ‘You’re the smart one’ … it became obvious during high school – she wanted me to get the money up. Because I think she felt that I was the most responsible one out of me and my brother and that I would be the one to look after her. Because, being from her background, the kids look after the parent. And because our family was poor I think she would have been – she still is – a bit concerned about where she’s going to go. So … from probably about the stage when I was 14, 15, she was like, ‘You’ve got to work hard so you can get a really good job and buy a house.’ She didn’t actually say, ‘Buy a house’ …
Friends and teachers at Sesh’s secondary school helped her deal with her problems at home. One friend suggested that she ‘write a diary to deal with all the stuff at home’, and as a result, her English improved. Sesh was referred to the school counsellor at the end of her fourth year of high school (age 16) to help her cope with the pressure of expectations that she felt from her parents to achieve good grades:
Everyone knew – because it was like a small town – so everyone knows everyone else’s business. So … the teachers knew that I’d be worried about getting a [good] grade because … they’d met my Dad before … everyone [including my friends] was like … ‘If she wants to do her homework during the lunch break then let her do it. And then when she wants to … come out with us, then she can.’ So it wasn’t a big deal.
At the end of that year Sesh’s peer group consisted of a number of girls who wanted to do well at school. Sesh found this group very supportive (‘we got very competitive … we were supposed to be the smart kids’). The group found the demands of the last two years of secondary school more difficult, and some struggled:
I just didn’t get too emotionally involved … You know that you’re trying your hardest anyway … I’m already getting it from home, so there’s no point in taking it to school as well … up until that point, no one else had really been struggling to … get the best grade, whereas I had been doing that … most of the way through, so it was … more comforting having them there, who were also struggling to get the best grade because … I was normal then. I felt like … these guys are actually getting what I’m getting.
Sesh continued studying maths and science to appease her father, even though ‘I just couldn’t get the concepts’ and ‘English was my best subject.’ At that stage, with her experience of horses, she wanted to be a veterinarian:
… [but] that required … really high grades … And looking back I think that was too much of a pressure … I don’t think I was ever going to be a veterinarian.
Sesh regarded her teachers and friends as role models. Her physics and maths teacher ‘was a massive support’, driving her on weekends to visit her mother who lived in another country town ‘because he used to drive down to [the city] every weekend, so it was on the way’. This teacher would discuss the physics concepts that Sesh found difficult. Another teacher drove Sesh and another student to attend a university ‘taster’ program where students went to lectures and experienced university life for a week.
Sesh later became aware of the obstacles to success of attending a country school:
… we didn’t really have that many resources. I really only found [that] out when I first came to uni … Everyone here knew how to write. I’m not a very good writer. How to form an argument in an essay. Didn’t really know how to do that … I had no idea what they were talking about. I remember getting my first essay back and them saying, ‘Where’s your argument?’ And I thought, ‘What are you talking about? It’s all an argument.’ So skills like that, the English teacher didn’t really focus on.
Sesh considered her parents to be another obstacle to success:
… They were a big pressure … The teachers never put a lot of pressure on me to do well. It was my parents. I don’t think they realised how much pressure … there were quite a few times when I’d get a grade that wasn’t the best and it would actually affect how I felt about myself really badly. It was when I got home, whether I should tell Dad about it or not … If he’d pushed much more, I probably would have just packed it all in.
Attitudes towards gender also impacted on Sesh’s experience of secondary school:
… particularly the girls – it was just, ‘Oh, why do you have to try?’ One girl was happy to get a C … and it wasn’t that she wasn’t smart – it was just … ‘What am I going to do with this after school anyway?’ … because there was always the expectation that we would all end up getting married and having kids by the time we were 25 anyway. So … it was just, ‘Well, what’s the point?’ The boys were a little bit different. They were expected to do a little bit better, only because the teachers said they needed to be able to read because of the catalogue they must use on the farm … So it was … more of a country thing, I think!
After completing school, Sesh was offered a place in a science-based course at a university in a regional city, but she left after only three weeks:
… I look back and … it was bound to happen … I’m in this weird city, I don’t know anyone. No one really seems to be that interested in me … I had to hand in my assignment. I didn’t get the grade that I thought I would get. And it was my fault … the expectation … from the lecturers was different. The social environment was different. And just being in a big city and feeling like I didn’t have the support of my family. I basically said to my Mum, ‘Look I’ve got into [] University’ … And she says, ‘Oh good.’ ‘And so … how am I going to get down there?’ She goes, ‘I don’t know. Take the train?’ ‘Well, where am I going to live then, Mum?’ ‘I don’t know, where do you want to live?’
Sesh went to the university student services office where she was given a list of houses:
… so I just called up one of them and it was with an elderly lady and another student in this house. But that in itself was really confronting … because I’d … never thought I’d see myself living in a house with people I didn’t know. That was a bit scary for me at that stage …
Sesh went back to her mother after three weeks:
And she was very angry with me. She was [saying], ‘Get back to uni. Go back to uni.’ And I was [saying], ‘No, what for?’
Sesh contacted another university in the town where her mother now lived:
… they said, ‘Oh, we’ve got a place in arts if you want to do arts’ … So I lasted probably about another three weeks in that. Dropped out of that and then Mum [was] … not very happy with me at all. My Dad said, ‘Oh, well I told you so!’ … because I moved down to my Mum’s place. As opposed to my Dad’s place … The next year I still felt that pressure to go to uni. Tried doing a science degree. I think I finished a semester of that. Before I dropped out. Because it was still all this science stuff … Like I had to keep on doing what my Dad told me to do, and I didn’t feel like I could do anything else.
Sesh then moved to the city ‘for work, not for school’, which helped her to adjust to city life. On the problems of transition to university, Sesh commented:
… in a country area everything’s relaxed. You’ve got more supports there … it’s easier to make friends because everyone’s close together … you’re seeing them all the time, every day. So it’s mainly the social aspects. But it’s not only that – just the sheer size of… the buildings [at university] and the busyness of it – you just can’t get away. You don’t have your moment of peace. As much as you would out in the country. So there’s no real down time … at most of the unis that I’ve been to, even if you do go into the library … there’s always stuff going [on]… unless you locked yourself in a classroom when there was no one there, you would still have people going around.
Sesh believed that the teaching style in her country secondary school did not prepare her for the transition to university, and that the low expectations, particularly of girls, constrained their aspirations:
… [the teachers] were supportive in any way that they possibly could. But I think the teaching style … wasn’t really what we needed to make … the grades … There was a jump in [expectations].
Sesh noted that ‘one or two’ of her friends from secondary school had also been unable to make the transition from school to university and had returned to their home town.
Sesh started working at a large gambling venue in the city, then went to Europe and worked in casinos there. She also worked at other jobs, including a child care centre, at ‘a place where lots of refugees came into’. One day her supervisor there ‘pulled me aside and said’:
‘We’re creating a position for you for custody disputes … If they’ve got a problem they can contact you and you can support them.’ And I [said], ‘Oh, OK, well why are you giving me that?’ And they said, ‘Because you’re … the best person we’ve got that doesn’t cause arguments … You calm things down, you don’t get them all fired up.’
This was a turning point in Sesh’s decision to pursue higher education:
I was still wondering at that point … about what was my next step. What was I going to do? Where am I going to go? And then they said this, and I thought, ‘Right, then I’m going back home and I’m going to study.’ I could actually do something.
Sesh returned home and ‘did volunteer telephone counselling’:
I thought that if I could do that, I’d take the next step. I wouldn’t just jump into a degree … all the way through primary school and high school, I’d always loved animals. And it was like I loved animals more than humans … And then going to Europe and seeing the stuff that was going on transferred just being empathetic [to humans] and wanting to help out … anyone that needed it. I wasn’t going to be judgemental …
Sesh explored her options while working as a volunteer telephone counsellor and decided to pursue psychology:
I spoke to my Mum about it … and she … [said] … ‘Why don’t you get a degree so that you can get a decent job … like psychology? … there’s lots of famous psychologists out there!’ So I did the psychology degree …
There were many times when Sesh ‘just wanted to quit’ but friends encouraged her to continue:
… during the second last semester I was totally burnt out. And went and saw my Dad then and he’s just turned around and said, ‘You’ve done … two and a half years of this degree, you’re not going to quit. I’m not going to let you. It’s not going to happen.’ And he [gave] me that look that he used to give me when I was a child … [and I said] ‘Ohh, OK, OK, I’ll go and finish it off.’
When she completed the degree Sesh’s family expected that she would ‘get a job’, but she decided to study social work, rejecting her family’s views and marking a shift away from her father’s influence:
I don’t really care about my family … what they think … they all hate social workers … My parents had bad experiences with [social workers] … when they first got married. They saw a social worker. The social worker said that they should have kids. So they had us kids and … that didn’t save the marriage at all. So they’re sort of blaming the social workers …
At the time she made the decision to study social work:
I don’t think I really realised how much they were pushing. And then when I did it … my Dad just looked at me and [said], ‘Well, it’s your life. You’re over 18. You can do what you want.’ And my Mum … well, her attitude was made clear … I went, ‘OK, so they don’t really approve at all, but they’re willing to [go along with it].’
Managing study
Planning
As Sesh had finished a psychology degree, she understood academic arrangements and requirements, and how to manage the costs associated with studying at university. She planned for text books and internet costs, and applied for the government student allowance. She lived at home with her mother to keep her living costs down, knowing that this would help her to achieve her long-t erm goals: ‘I wanted to get out – I wanted to be able to have a career where I can reliably get out of there … ’ She was confident that she would complete the social work degree:
Managing
Sesh did not undertake any paid work during this course but did voluntary work with an indigenous community organisation during the summer breaks. Her decision not to work during the semester was based on her experience in her previous degree where working interfered with her ability to study:
Not working means I can focus more on my assignments and what needs to be done, but working as well as the study also enriches – you need that break away – you have to get away, whereas at the moment I am just so involved in doing assignments that I can’t think of anything else …
There was a few times where … I forgot about a deadline or something like that and I’d stress out and go up to the boss and say, ‘Look, can I have the day off, because I’d better get this assignment done?’ And they’d [say] … ‘What for?’ … after those sort of experiences, you just sort of learn to get your assignments done as quickly as possible.
Sesh clearly benefited from her experience in her first degree. Friends found that she was unavailable during semester due to study commitments. She became focused on study and ‘[e]verything else fits around’ that.
The electronic resources at the library assisted Sesh with research for assignments. Referencing was a skill that she had learned during her psychology degree:
Referencing is a big thing that I learnt from the first one. I’d never had to reference before … just the logic of it. The logic of you have to write their surname, then the initial of their first name, then the year, then the journal article name … And then it’s different for online articles … I understand now why, but at the time … I never really thought about it before … that you could actually be stealing someone else’s ideas that way. It was a new concept.
Support
Sesh found it ‘weird’ that at 28 she was still living at home with her mother, relying on financial support and help with daily living tasks such as cooking, washing, and cleaning. Sesh’s family had become more understanding of the demands of a degree. Initially her family expected Sesh to be available for errands and household tasks while her brother, who had also started a degree, was allowed time and space to study:
He’s sort of like the alpha male because he’s the only one … and there’s a cultural thing with my Mum … so, him being the male, what he says … is taken as law … and also because he’s got a girlfriend there as well … Whereas … I’m the female and I don’t have a partner living there … it was a bit of a struggle last year. But it’s all sorted itself out now … just them sort of walking into your room … forgetting that you’re actually engrossed in something … and just turn[ing] on the TV really loud because they hate the fact that there’s no noise … little things like that … end up slowing you down.
Sesh described feeling isolated:
… because there’s nothing else in my life. I’ve made uni such a central process … people my age at 28, they’re out there, they’reworking … they go out on weekends … that stuff that normal people do … I don’t understand any of that. I don’t have any of that.
She was able to discuss some of her studies with her brother, although he argued from ‘a different perspective’.
Peer support was significant for Sesh. She approached other students in her course for help, using online technology to keep in contact with them, and valuing the collaborative learning that can occur through sustained peer contact:
We usually work on similar assignments at the same time, so it’s reciprocal … Whereas with the teachers, [if] you go up to them and say, ‘Look, I’m having a problem with this essay’ … it’s more of an, ‘OK, where are you at? Yes, that sounds like a good idea,’ and then off you go. Whereas when you’re discussing it with a student … there’s a bit more brainstorming, I think.
During her previous degree, Sesh had approached university student support services for assistance with forming an argument in her writing, but this ‘[d]idn’t help’:
… she just kept on just asking questions like, ‘What’s another way of saying this?’ And I obviously had no idea what she thought was wrong … She was saying things like, ‘There’s no structure.’ And I’m like, ‘There are paragraphs there. What do you mean by structure?’ So that’s the sort of stuff that I’m sharing with students now which she didn’t really help me with … It was just three years of trial and error … And she’d sort of speak in another language and not be able to see where you were.
The friends that Sesh made during the course were ‘definitely’ her biggest support in completing the degree:
… they also helped me out with personal stuff because my family … didn’t really have an environment that was supportive of me studying. So when it got to the final semester I actually moved out just before the semester started and one of my friends said I could stay there to finish the finals … they quite literally believed in me. It was weird. It was weird how it all happened.
After her attempt to obtain support during her previous course, Sesh did not approach university support services again. She did not think that her current department could have done anything to better support her learning:
I wouldn’t ask for things to be any different … because I learnt what I learnt through what happened … I still think they did a bloody awesome job … There’s two people [I know] … one has graduated from psych and another one has graduated from social science and I’m just looking at both of them [thinking] … ‘I feel sorry for you mate. You’ve got a bit of learning to do there’ … they’re a bit green … I just sit there and go, ‘Yeah, didn’t you know?’ but that was just because we had placements. We had two placements that they didn’t have.
Reflections and future plans
Sesh completed her degree in the minimum time. Reflecting on her experiences as a learner, she commented:
I thought that I was really motivated to get out there and just absorb things and it didn’t matter what it was; I was open to anything. But I don’t think I really was as open as … I thought I was. I think I felt a bit arrogant about it all.
She thought this ‘arrogance’ related to the fact that she was the first in her family to attend university and this was her second degree.
Feedback on an assignment in the first semester of her first year changed Sesh’s view of herself as a learner:
I think the depth of the assignments and the different spin that they had on it [made me realise that] … you can’t be sitting there all high and mighty about it. You’ve really just got to get focused in on what you’re actually doing … After my first few assignments … I was sort of thinking, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll get a good grade for these’ and I obviously hadn’t done the work that I could have done … I didn’t have the attitude to go in there and give it everything that I’ve got …
The assignment ‘was on an area that I thought that I would have been pretty good at’. When it was returned:
… it wasn’t that bad. They were just saying, ‘You could have done more.’ And I was [thinking] at the time, ‘What more? What else is there?’ … now I know … I got angry for a little bit … I think it was just me realising that I really didn’t give it my all … to begin with I was really upset.
The comments on the assignment motivated Sesh to start thinking about what she was learning:
I was here for a reason … I’ve already got one degree. If I don’t fulfil this then everything is wasted so I’ve … just got to do it. But at that point I [thought], ‘Well, don’t worry about how good you are or whatever, just do it … ’
Sesh completed a field work placement at the end of her first year, working in drug and alcohol assessment. This placement also had an impact on Sesh’s view of herself as a learner:
I still had a bit of that cockiness in me because I actually put my name down … not even knowing what it was. I just [thought], ‘OK … I don’t want to do disability services, and I don’t want to do hospitals so I’ll just get one of the other ones.’ And everyone said … ‘My God, Sesh, why have you picked that one?’ And then afterwards I’ve gone in there and I’ve just [thought], ‘Oh, man. OK, I can do this.’ Writing … five page assessments and stuff … it was the same thing again. You get that knock back at the beginning and it got me motivated. So I think it was a theme … motivation increased heaps after [that placement] … it just went through the roof.
Sesh was so motivated that she asked her parents to fund her attendance at a conference about working with sexual offenders. She was the only student at the conference:
I ended up getting approached by some people … and they were … saying, ‘Well, how about a job? Do you want a job?’ And so … from the placement, I really … began to find my feet about what I liked doing.
The conference also reinforced some of her learning from the course:
… there was someone who came over from Oxford … talking about multi-systemic therapy [MST] … And then when I went up to the … conference, I actually met someone from Missouri in America and they were all big into the MST as well … And I ended up getting a really good grade for that assignment… obviously, I must have learnt something because I never knew about MST beforehand …
Sesh’s second year was ‘just about solidifying that … passion’:
It was quite a huge year … I went out on another indigenous volunteer thing during the break and then I came back all feisty again and this time … all my assignments were all on indigenous stuff. I was really passionate …
In the first semester of that year, Sesh recalled some bullying during student group work which she considered the lecturer did not deal with appropriately. This made her angry and led her to question what the social work course was about:
So I stood up in a lecture and [said] … ‘I don’t think for anyone to be a social worker should they be ganging up on [someone]’ because it was. It was … one girl being surrounded by five others that are just attacking her.
This experience changed Sesh’s attitude:
… after that I decided … I was going to focus more on what I wanted to get out of it rather that what the year wants to get out of it. And that was good because it meant during the next semester … I was more focused. I got the assignments done really quick[ly] and I was helping others with their assignments as well, which is weird when … I’d made the decision that I was going to focus on my stuff but it ended up being that in focusing on my stuff it meant I was more [collaborative].
Sesh achieved High Distinction grades in all her subjects in her final semester, after which she gained employment in the prison system. This was another new start:
I think I’m back at stage one again … new job, all that sort of thing. So I’ve done the training for it, it is just a matter of going in there and doing it. So there is a part of me that is going, ‘Yep, I’ve learnt it all. I can go in there and just rock.’ But I know very well that I don’t know …
Sesh commented on her most important learning from the course:
It wasn’t how to write essays … It was more the challenges that I was faced with during the course. The things that challenged me to either quit or to stay … I don’t know how to explain it. But when you fight for something so much, you end up … determined and passionate and all those things. You roll them all up and that is what I learnt. I don’t think I was ever passionate about anything before. I mean I was, but not like this …
I think beforehand I didn’t know where I was going, what I was doing and why I was doing what I was doing. Then doing the placement, meeting the girls that I met and I hung out with who were similar minded to me … these girls that I’m going to stay friends with from here for a long time … and having the opportunity to meet them and for us to work together in a group and the way we worked was just fantastic. And the motivation and beliefs that they had in me … And the sparking of that passionate drive to just keep on going.
On her graduation, Sesh also reflected on the impact of her family’s background and response to her success:
I look back now … at my Dad and my Mum in particular, and my brother … and my Mum is still exactly the same and my Dad … he ‘got it’ sort of half way through this degree, but after graduation yesterday it finally clicked in with him because he’d never been to a graduation before. He’d never seen anything like it. We were packing our bags to come down here and he was saying, ‘So what do I wear?’ and I’m [saying], ‘What do you mean what do you wear? It’s a graduation.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, so do I wear a suit?’ I’m [saying], ‘Well, I think other people will be wearing suits. I don’t want to say you’ve got to wear a suit but there will be some people there.’
So … he’s got all dressed up and then after the graduation ceremony he was bouncing … Yeah, he got a real kick out of it. So … looking back … I think the lack of support on my Dad’s side is not from being intimidated or anything like that, it’s about just not knowing … the perceptions I get from my parents is what I’m still going to get out in the field anyway so it is preparation if nothing else. The fact that it can change is awesome on my Dad’s side … I’d never thought about why my parents reacted in certain ways with study. I never understood before … And now you come back and you think about it and you put all the pieces together … This is about their perception of learning. So it is not my stuff. That’s what was enlightening. I loved that.
Sesh’s graduation had a huge impact on her, leading her to reflect on her experiences in the course:
… it’s all been good … I think I’m heaps more grateful because I had graduation yesterday … and I’m … still bouncing from that … I so didn’t like my psych degree. I so didn’t respect it that I wrote myself off the night before graduation so I was there going, ‘Yeah, whatever.’ But this one I was actually really excited. I knew that I got something out of this, whereas … I got some stuff out of psych but it hadn’t answered any questions for me and this one did because now I’m working … I’m like that brand new teenager kid in a new workplace, bouncing round and going, ‘Yep, I can do it all.’ So it’s good to have that … it’s very rare that someone can get to do a job that they absolutely love … it’s just amazing.
Shannon’s story
Pathway to higher education
Shannon has a rural background. His family moved around frequently when he was at primary school but he was always a capable student. He commenced university study in the city when he finished high school but did not complete his degree and returned to live with his partner and baby son in the country. He worked initially in a timber mill, gradually moving into jobs that led to his enrolment in his current course.
Family background
Shannon’s father was a mechanic and his family moved around because of his father’s work. Then his mother, ‘when she was 35 decided to go to university to be a teacher so then we moved because of that’. They moved from the country to the city and then back to the country. He has two younger sisters.
When Shannon was young he enjoyed ‘being outside, climbing trees, going for a ride’. He did not think about what he wanted to do when he was older:
I don’t remember ever wanting to be anything. I remember being told what I could be … I was living in the moment. I really didn’t think, ‘This is what I want to do’ … I was good at computing but I never even really wanted to do that when I was older. I really didn’t think about doing anything until the end of high school.
Other people (parents, family friends, teachers) thought:
… I’d be a writer or a politician, something like that [because] I was really good at reading. I’d always be in the top group or reading books that I shouldn’t have been.
Because his mother was studying to be a teacher, ‘family friends … were often teachers’. Shannon was ‘just finishing primary school’ when his mother began teaching in the town where he has lived most of his adult life:
I finished primary school as she finished uni … my younger sister basically grew up at the university … She was with Mum while she was studying. She was there every day with her.
His mother had a successful teaching career, becoming a School Principal and then ‘a Coordinator across hundreds of schools’. His mother’s brothers were also ‘fairly academic’:
… only one of them went to uni, but they were quite … intellectual. And so they’d often encourage that intellectual side. And you’d be arguing theories for the sake of arguing theories.
… it’s funny … I didn’t know until well after I was already at … university that my Grandma was the first woman to graduate through the Conservatorium [of Music] there.
Shannon’s mother’s sister attended university, but his own sisters did not. It ‘[n]ever really interested them’. His ‘middle’ sister did not finish school, but his younger sister did. Shannon thought that his mother’s decision to return to study ‘definitely’ influenced him:
… my thinking was that if my Mum could go to uni at 35 and now she’s a Principal … then I could do it at 27 or 28.
His mother left Shannon to make his own decisions: ‘that was our family dynamics … you make your own decisions’:
I guess when I went to uni straight after school … everybody just did that … you just applied for uni and went. But I only stayed there two years.
When he moved to the city to attend university after high school, he lived with his aunt in the first year, and then in a house. He discontinued in his second year following the birth of his son:
I stopped going to university because I met somebody and we had a child – young … and it was too difficult to be in a big city from the country with a young child …
His partner was a student, ‘but she stopped going to school’. She came to the city to have the baby and, as she did not have a family who could support her, she stayed at a place that supported young mothers. Three months after their son was born she moved back to the country and lived ‘in an Anglican community … for a little while’. Shannon then returned as well, and with his partner and their baby, lived with his parents until ‘we eventually got a house’. He needed a job and in the town he came from ‘just about all the jobs are in the timber mill’:
So I worked in the timber mill and I was fairly bored doing it … So whenever a different role came up I would take it.
He took on the roles of occupational health and safety officer and trade union representative, which involved negotiation and work-based training activities. Acquiring these skills led to a change in employment:
… [it] was actually when my second child was born that I decided I didn’t want to do that any more. Shift work didn’t suit and I started to look for other work. And I went to a supported employment facility – which was a timber mill which people with physical and intellectual disabilities worked in. And I got the job because I could train them. I knew nothing about … disability but I knew how to train people to do a timber job. So I did that. And quickly got interested in the disadvantaged [people] that I saw …
When his contract ended, an encounter with a student friend of his younger sister led to his next position:
… she worked in disability … actually doing the job I’m doing now – she … said there’s an opportunity for a job working with people with disability in community health. So she linked me into [that] … I think it was significant that it was at the start of an agency beginning in the town. Previous to that, there hadn’t been any government agency which was providing care to people with disabilities.
With the manager who was appointed, Shannon helped to set up the agency:
That was a real good learning curve. As that grew, I guess I took on more responsibilities within that because I was lucky enough to be there … that was the impetus really to change … it was still shift work. And … because I was good at setting up programs and negotiating with people in the community … I was able to negotiate just [to] work day shift. And solely concentrated on that. But because I didn’t have any qualifications, I couldn’t do much beyond that.
Knowing that he was ‘stuck there’ with the skills but not the qualifications to progress, eventually led Shannon to return to study:
… [At] an inter-agency training day … [others] recognised … that I noticed that there were things in the community that could be changed, a better way of doing things … they were strangers basically … I spoke to somebody who said, ‘Well, hey, I’m recognising this trait, but you’re not going to be able to do much with it unless [you qualify]’ … I don’t know the person’s name and I’ve never seen him again. And I took it away and thought … well, at barbecues and … family events or sitting around on the weekend, you’re talking about those social issues and putting forward your opinion so argue it on paper and get something out of it.
Shannon could not enrol directly into his current course because he was not qualified, but he enrolled in another degree that would allow him to transfer later.
When he returned to study, Shannon continued to work for the same government agency. He enjoyed the job, though he would have preferred to work in a non-government organisation:
I don’t like the constraints of working for government. I think it’s too limiting … But I don’t want to move to a non-government organisation without a degree, because I won’t get paid very much … Inside government, [the pay’s] reasonable [if you’re] unqualified. Outside of government it would be a pittance. So if I can be qualified before I leave the government, then I’ll be OK, I think.
Shannon’s children were 7 and 11 respectively when he began his current course, and Shannon was 30. Pursuing university study and his ambition to move into more senior positions in his field were driven by his need to provide for his family:
Educational experiences
Shannon attended five different primary schools, which provided him with ‘different experiences of learning’:
… some were in one-classroom schools. Some were in brand new schools. Some were in schools in low socio-economic areas.
This ‘didn’t seem to bother’ him. He remembered:
… writing stories in recess and lunch and having to be told to leave. And carrying too many books for a little kid to be carrying into school.
Shannon enjoyed reading and as the oldest child, ‘I had time to be read to.’ He also remembered ‘getting in trouble in the school yard’ and ‘running around’ but ‘[n]othing stands out’, though he recalled a teacher he found supportive:
… because we’d moved schools so much, having one teacher for two years in a row was quite significant … And so he inspired me to read more and argue. Challenge things and negotiate meanings … I think the thing I remember most about that teacher was … whenever there was a question, I’d always put forward two sides of the story. And he’d keep saying, ‘You’ve got to come to a decision’ and I’d say, ‘No, I won’t. I’m going to sit in the middle.’
Shannon did not recall much about high school: ‘it was a new town, new people, and a new school.’ He was ‘good at study’: ‘I remember I didn’t try very hard but I achieved well.’ However, he was ‘falling behind’ in his penultimate year and he then moved to the Catholic school his sisters attended. The change was prompted because in the first part of the year he had ‘decided I didn’t want to go to school, I wanted to go swimming’. The change provided the opportunity to:
… have a fresh start at the next school where the rest of my family is … I thought it was a good way to make up for six months of making mistakes.
At high school his interest was ‘very clearly [in the] arts’:
I knew that I was a people person. I knew that I could … influence people and I could influence situations … like at debating and those arts sort of things … It’s kind of a funny story … [At] the public school … in science we had to do biology and chemistry and physics and … agriculture I think. And I remember I did physics and agriculture … and when I went to the new school in the second semester, I said that I’d already done chemistry and biology. Because I really didn’t want to do them, and so I never actually did chemistry and biology at school … I only did physics. I … talked my way out of doing them. [It] might be jumping ahead, but when I worked at a timber mill later on in life I got interested in … the way chemistry worked and so I went and bought … books from the second hand shop and on night shift at the timber mill, I would go through the exercises and do the test and I say to myself, that I actually finished [high school] chemistry. Because I did it by night shift.
At the Catholic school Shannon ‘did really well’:
I came top of the school, but they didn’t like me at all. I challenged them a lot. In particular in terms of religion and things like that … But I did well and I got along with people.
When Shannon finished school, he studied psychology at university:
… we had to put our preferences in, and a couple of us sat in the library on the computer and looking through the books and [said], ‘Oh, let’s do psychology, that’d be cool.’ That was all it was … ‘It’s a people subject, let’s do it.’ Now I recognise that I didn’t like psychology. Because I thought it was too objective to actually achieve anything. Couldn’t take a stance on anything … values had nothing to do with it.
He was doing ‘fairly well’ and passed first year and the first half of the second year, but his son was born on the day of his mid-year exams. In the second half of that year, ‘I still went to exams, but I didn’t pass.’ Prior to this his life had been organised around his study:
I was only 17 and I didn’t do much else … I treated [university] like school. I went there and I came home and I studied each night and I’d get up the next day with my packed lunch and caught the train home at the end of the day. So I didn’t have any other distractions.
Following the life changes that took Shannon away from study, the development of his interest in helping people, and the realisation that he needed a qualification to progress in his chosen career, he began a three- year undergraduate degree, studying off-campus and attending weekend residential schools. He did not finish this course as he only needed two years of previous university study to qualify for his current course. He then transferred and continued to study as an off-campus student. Hence, these two years of study provided the bridge he needed into the course and career he wanted to pursue.
Managing study
Planning
In making plans for his studies, Shannon
… had to make sure that I kept a workspace … in the house … [I] tried to keep organised with my computer – tried to keep things as orderly as possible for ease of access … I guess preparation was more about just telling people what I was doing so that they were prepared for the fact that I’m going to be studying and some things might be different.
In creating a workspace, Shannon did not have ‘a particular room’:
Our lounge room’s quite long and I have a desk next to a window facing the wall … so the kids can be doing stuff in the same room and I can be facing the other direction.
Because he had a laptop as well as a home computer, Shannon was able to develop other ways of working:
… the laptop has wireless networking. Most of the time it evolved into me sitting … out the back under the pergola doing my work, rather than in the house … Basically just being able to switch off from everything else and get things done. Sometimes I’ll be doing it in the kitchen so that I can be studying while my partner’s preparing tea … basically I found although I’d prepared a space … sometimes I need to be near my family and sometimes I need to be away from my family and having a laptop and wireless made it possible … there was an expense associated with that.
Despite his mobile study habits, Shannon still made use of the workspace at home:
I still have the computer there and … I’ve got my working books there. There’s too many things to keep in one place. I’ve got a bookshelf in another room where things go when I’m not using them … but I still keep things there, like all of the filing, books I’m using at the present time. But essentially I pick those up from there where I know they are …
Sometimes his mobility extended beyond the household environment:
I take four hours a week study leave off work. And rather than be at home and do study, with the dishes to be done and the washing to be hung out … I’ll drive up to the local lake and sit there under a tree with my laptop. Until the battery runs out … I actually have four hours that are completely about study that way.
Shannon’s partner worked full-time so he reduced his working hours:
I dropped back my hours so there was more time for other things. So I only work till 3.30[pm] now, whereas I used to work … till 5.00[pm] … if I worked full-time I would be getting five hours [paid study leave] a week, but because I work … till 3.30[pm] each day, I get four hours.
Shannon’s computer was central to managing his study:
Basically over time I’ve used [Windows] Outlook and the different Task Manager functions and calendar functions a lot more, in terms of having reminders pop up to say, ‘This needs to be done’ … I’ve learnt to break down semesters and subjects and assignments into very small parts. For example, once residential school’s over, I will go home and I’ll look at the dates and I’ll put those in the calendar … on the computer. And then once I’ve put those dates in, then I’ll work back … I might move the dates around – I mean, never past their due date. But sometimes I’ll put when I think I need to be finished that, so that they’re reasonably spaced and then I fill the gaps … for example, do a quarter of the readings for this essay … over four days, an introduction over two, next paragraph over two. And basically try and space it out so that every morning when I turn the computer on, a task pops up or the calendar pops up and says, ‘Today you need to do this small task’ … I don’t think I would have done it any other way, just because there are so many competing demands on my time and knowing that today I only have to spend half an hour of my time on uni as opposed to four hours [makes it manageable]. I might have given myself a goal of reading a chapter and if I happen to get it done before six o’clock in the morning, then I’ve done my study for the day.
If I know what I have to do, I can fit it into places you wouldn’t think you could fit into study … I can just keep that little amount with me, everywhere I go that day, perhaps if you’re waiting outside a shop … There are so many different places if you’ve got it with you – then you just pick it up and read it.
The computer also helped Shannon to organise his day:
I’ve taught myself to get up at five o’clock and that took a long time! … the first thing I’ll do is I’ll have breakfast … but if I turn the computer on, then I’ll see what I have to do. If I have not planned to do exercise that morning, then I’ll get stuck into it. And more often than not, I’ll get done what I need to get done. I get … [the children] up at seven. So normally, I’ve got two hours of my own time, with no one else up.
For the two years Shannon was enrolled in the earlier course, he studied in the evenings but early morning study fitted better with his other responsibilities. This routine was sustained six days a week, with Sunday his only day for lying in. On weekdays when he finished work at 3.30pm:
Usually, it’s taking the kids somewhere to a sport. The scouts or tennis training or organ lessons or … just hanging out with the kids.
He recognised the importance of this time:
… there are times when … an assignment becomes due, sometimes you’ve got no choice and you have to do the work in the time, but even then I recognise that I shouldn’t be doing it there. It should be their time with me. And … I’ll just put my pen down and deal with them … Ten minutes and then I’m able to go back, whereas if I try and persevere and just try to block it out, I probably wouldn’t achieve as much as if I didn’t put the pen down.
When Shannon began his current course he set up the system of alerts to deal with the workload. His previous course had involved a lot of work but:
… it was at a different level … of professionalism … or a different level of reading, or a different standard of work … you seem to step up a bit for this course … it was just basically such an overwhelming thing, I thought I need[ed] to work out a way to tackle it.
He went to bed at 10.00pm, ‘so we have an hour or so after the kids are asleep’.
Because Shannon was studying off-campus and working he studied part-time, with each year of the course taken over two years. At the beginning of his second year, his children were aged 8 and 12 respectively. Study was ‘getting easier’ as the children grew older:
… they both tend to equate my study to work. I’m always telling people that I’m studying what I’m working with and I’m working with what I’m studying and they obviously have absorbed that in the sense that my daughter says, ‘Have you finished your work?’ But I said, ‘That’s not work, that’s my study.’ But she says, ‘But it’s work’ … I feel a bit sad in the sense that she thinks I’m working at home. And I don’t want to … model that sort of behaviour … she’ll grow up thinking that it’s OK to bring your work home!
Financial management was also important in organising Shannon’s study:
… again it’s about using calendars and things as wisely as possible … I’m no good with finances so … I compensate … [by] just being really open and informed … [as] soon as I know what subject booklists I’ve got, I’ll print them out and put them in our invoice folder, so that I know … that it’s an upcoming expense. I don’t tend to get them until the last minute, but that’s just a bit longer to prepare for the expense.
Shannon stopped borrowing books from the university library because he could not afford the costs involved. The library paid ‘for the books to be sent … and I have to pay for them to come back’. He also found that he got ‘into strife’ using old material from the library so he began buying new books.
In addition, Shannon had to find the money for travel to the residential schools:
We have two cars but we tend not to register one unless we have to. And we had to register the second car simply because I have to take the good one away … so there’s lots of inconveniences and expenses that you wouldn’t normally associate with a two and a half day residential school.
Shannon drove the car to the city for university residential schools but he still had to cut costs while there:
I even rode my bike … from my friend’s place where I’m staying for free to here, simply because it saves me the eight dollars a day in parking.
Taking unpaid leave from work for two 70-day professional placements was itself ‘a big expense’, which also impacted on others in his work team. He managed to negotiate 20 days paid leave for his first placement:
… they’ll be able to get a replacement for the part of the time that I’m not getting money … But if they want to replace me for the two and a half months, that means I don’t get any money. So it’s a Catch 22 in a sense. So, I’m saving money now in preparation for that. It’s quite tricky!
He took on an extra job to supplement his income:
I’m going to use one of my sibling’s farms to earn a little bit of cash money while I’m on the placement. He has a dairy farm so I’ll do some work there. I’ll work his early morning weekend shifts which he doesn’t like, milking cows … it’ll be $150 a weekend that I didn’t have.
As well as affecting work colleagues, study also involved managing time with family and friends. Shannon’s parents lived about 400 kilometres (248 miles) away:
And they might invite us up for a weekend and sometimes we just say, ‘No, I’ve got something to do.’ Or sometimes it suits me to take the kids up and just let Mum and Dad deal with the kids and I’ll spend a weekend studying away from home …
In terms of relationships with friends:
… they get used to the fact that if they’re having a barbecue or an event, I still rock up, but I’ll leave early and I won’t sit around and have a few beers. I might have one and then leave, and then come back, once I’ve achieved my goal.
The computer also helped Shannon to balance study with these other aspects of his life:
It sounds like I do a lot of time studying but … before I dropped back my hours, I did a lot of thinking about balancing my commitments. And whereas in the previous two years … I threw myself into study a lot and I got results … I really wasn’t balanced. And I started to think, ‘Well, I need to get some more balance to make it achievable.’ And so … rather than do a lot of work less organised, I’m trying to do less work but be more organised.
I’ve got a six month [gym] membership. So that was good fun and I’d go three mornings a week for an hour, from six to seven. And I started playing tennis, and I started playing hockey … to exercise I actually have to put down the books … And that was purely the reasoning behind joining the clubs … because it’s costing me money, I’ve dropped back from the gym, but I’ve … worked out a different program, riding and running and home exercise routine … essentially if do exercise more I can study better.
Shannon also undertook community responsibilities which involved a few hours of his time each week. As well as being treasurer for the scouts, he was on the hockey committee and managed his children’s tennis team. These activities took about five hours per week.
A change in Shannon’s circumstances after he began the course was the need to ‘look after my health a bit more’:
… but that’s only made [it] easier to organise and refine things … I had really, really, really high cholesterol … it was 8.9 and things start shutting down when you’re 10. So … I had to spend my time preparing food and things like that. But … I’ve managed that within three months – got it really good … I’ve got more energy and [am] feeling healthier.
Shannon did not cook but he shared the housework with his partner:
I’m a terrible cook so I just make sure I do all of the other things around cooking. Wash the dishes and just make sure the kitchen is clean before cooking … do the washing and do as much cleaning as possible … It is a little bit of a time waster in the fact that I finish at 3.30[pm] and she’ll finish at 5.00[pm], but I just can’t cook.
Sometimes work demands made study difficult, but he organised his study times to cope with the stress:
… quite often I don’t want to turn on a computer when I get home or I don’t want to have to deal with complex situations through uni after work which is a lot of the reason that I will do it before work.
Overall, Shannon managed his study by combining rigidity with flexibility:
Really it’s all about balance … it sounds like I’m really rigorous and into routines and things like that, but really, I’ve been flexible.
He had never seriously thought about giving up the course:
Sometimes I’ve thought it hasn’t been relevant … I’d rather just put my energy into getting on with my job, but then I think, well, you know, that’s being a bit arrogant, I need to be open to learning and taking new things in. Really it’s just, ‘Have I got time for this … in terms of stress?’ But then you discover something new and read something interesting or talk to someone about something interesting that recharges you, but … it could be easy to let yourself let it go.
These times of thinking about letting it go were rarely when an assignment was due (‘because they’re usually the times you’re energised’), but rather when:
… you’re expected to plod through chapter after chapter and do your own independent sort of learning … I prefer lots of little assignments to keep me going rather than a few big ones.
To Shannon, managing study was sometimes more important than what he studied:
Not always, but generally the achievement of, ‘Well, I handed that up and I got an OK grade.’ Sometimes that’s more important than the content … And other times the content’s more important than the achievement of the grade.
He felt that this was all part of ‘keep[ing] yourself motivated’:
… everyone finds at the end of the semester sometimes you just don’t care whether you get a very good grade, as long as you get it in. Well, I’ve actually always got really, really high grades … I got the top marks in the [previous] degree, for the [time] that I did it … [Each year] I got an award and I keep those on my desk. But basically what I told myself was that … at the end of the day I’ve got to survive it and it doesn’t matter if I get the best mark or whether I’ve got a pass. It’s still a pass … that’s why I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got some room to move.’ I can spend less time studying, and I can lower my quality a bit, and have more quality in the rest of my life.
Shannon had looked forward to his first placement, though it presented financial challenges:
… the money will be hard, but I’m looking forward to the fact that I imagine the work placement isn’t going to be anywhere near as stressful as my normal workplace … it’ll be the first time … where work isn’t added onto my study. It’s just study really. Because I’m not being paid – I’m there doing my placement and I can focus on study, and although there’s a pressure of money … it’s just uni …
Support
Shannon commented that ‘supportive workplaces and supportive family have best supported my study’. As an off-campus student, he had reservations about the use of online forums for feedback and support:
I think some people can do it freely. I can’t … there was actually an instruction in our last semester that we needed to make a comment of our own and then give someone else feedback and I found it really difficult to give feedback to someone, just words on a page, rather than someone there and then … you can’t gauge reactions. You might be completely off track … and it might be completely misinterpreted.
Telephone contact with fellow students raised other problems, such as time zone differences, and access at work to a phone to make long-distance calls. He did not contact other students in his town for support either, seeing them as having a support role ‘[o]nly in the sense that I see that they’re either nearly finished or they’ve finished’, which made him feel ‘[t]hat I need to get there’. He did, however, take on an informal support role himself in mentoring students in his region.
Apart from contacting the lecturer for advice ‘once or twice a year’, and asking a tutor to look at a draft assignment on occasion, Shannon did not feel the need to use any university support services and thought that those provided were adequate:
I think they always offered and they made it really clear what support was there and I also saw other people accessing those supports, so I don’t think they could’ve done anything differently.
Shannon did emphasise the point that ‘[f]ree postage for books’ would have better supported his learning. Because he could not afford costs involved in using the library, such as fines for late books and paying to post books back to the university, he relied more on the internet and journals.
Reflections and future plans
Shannon completed the course after four years of off-campus study. He regarded himself as a capable learner who had always been interested in learning. Reflecting on his development as a learner during the course, he commented:
I think if I was to describe myself as a learner before I started it might have been as … trying to absorb as much as possible. I guess I saw learning as trying to take in as much information as possible, and devote as much time as I could …
During the first half of the course:
I threw everything into it by doing as best I possibly could, and that gave me confidence that I could do it … As I gained confidence, I probably didn’t devote as much time but still put the effort in to get what I needed out of it.
He managed his studies by becoming more efficient at studying:
I guess I let learning come more naturally … I didn’t necessarily try and extract all of the major dot points, and all of the essential elements. I started enjoying it more and just reading and questioning and liking, and the learning came from that, rather than trying to extract it.
He began to notice these changes at the beginning of the second half of the course while talking to peers at a residential school. During the second part of the course:
I became an easier learner, a more relaxed learner. I was able to integrate my learning more because I was better at my work …
Shannon changed jobs during his second year of study, and started working at the agency where he completed his first placement. Although he noticed the changes to his development as a learner at the beginning of his third year, he considered that it was his first placement during the previous year that brought about these changes:
I think that’s because I’d had my first placement, and I took my learning into practice a little bit more, so I got more confident … I could see the value in the learning more, but I could also see that I had a good grasp of it, so I felt a bit more relaxed about it.
He regarded the most important learning for him during the course as:
(a) … the first placement and (b) … the second placement … because … reflecting back on all of the different things I’d learnt in my second placement, it really tied it together …
Having completed the course, Shannon was a ‘bit over’ formal study but still referred to his pleasure in learning. Although he had no immediate plans, he thought he might do some further study in the future. After confirming his career direction following his first placement, Shannon was ‘not planning to do anything different’. Confirmation by the university that he had completed the course allowed him to be paid more as a qualified employee: ‘I was stuck at work for a while. The only thing that’s changed is the piece of paper.’
Implications for managing and supporting student diversity: student retention
Sesh’s and Shannon’s stories illustrate the strong sense of self-reliance that some older students bring to their studies, coupled with limited use of university support services. Despite this, their stories point to a range of ways that universities can better support students from diverse backgrounds. In reflecting on these, we focus on the issue of student retention to encourage you to consider ways that university staff could have assisted them to achieve success during their previous attempts, and the implications arising from their subsequent successful experiences.
In Chapter 1 we noted that research indicates that students withdraw from their studies for a variety of reasons (Crosling et al., 2008), including poor preparation for higher education; weak institutional and/or course match, resulting in a lack of commitment; unsatisfactory academic experience; lack of social integration; financial issues; and personal circumstances (Jones, 2008; Long et al., 2006). You can see how some of these factors affected Sesh’s and Shannon’s original attempts at university study. Successful transition is the first stage in student retention and because Sesh and Shannon both initially enrolled as school leaver students, their stories raise some additional points about transition that we did not consider in Chapter 2, as Miranda and Rochelle did not enrol until they were older.
Among these points is the importance of the link between schools and universities in preparing students for higher education. Although Sesh had attended a week-long university ‘taster’ session, this was not enough, and her comments indicate that although she was doing well at school, the resources and expectations at her rural high school were not sufficient to provide adequate preparation. As part of an ‘everybody’s business’ approach to transition (Kift et al., 2010), you might consider whether this issue is being adequately addressed at your institution and, if not, what you could do in your role to address it. If you have a teaching role, then bridging courses and their equivalent are clearly important here.
Note, too, that both Sesh and Shannon lacked advice about courses and careers (as well as Rochelle in Chapter 2). Help in this area may have assisted Sesh in countering the influence of her father ‘pushing’ her towards maths and science and provided guidance in course selection, while for Shannon the choice of psychology, because ‘that’d be cool’, was obviously based on limited information. This is another important aspect of the relationship between schools and universities.
Sesh’s first study attempts were compromised by several factors stemming from her rural background. Among them was a lack of information designed specifically for rural students about both academic and practical matters. As well as lacking information on course selection, it appears that she was not provided with pre-enrolment information about what to expect at university, the differences between university and school, what to do in a lecture and a tutorial, assessment, fees and charges, and living-away-from-home issues such as food and shopping facilities near the campus, the cost of living, how to rent a flat, use public transport and get a job. She found university very big and overwhelming and felt her rural schooling had not prepared her adequately for university study. Sesh’s status as a first generation (first in family) student was also a factor in her withdrawal from her first course. Her family had little understanding of what was involved in moving from home to attend university, and she was left on her own to deal with social isolation as well as the academic and practical issues noted above.
This contrasts with Shannon’s family background. From his extended family he gained social capital in terms of ‘love of reading, belief in the value of education and encouragement of critical thinking’ (McLean and Holden, 2004: 4). This was pivotal, as was the influence of his mother, and his initial withdrawal was primarily the result of the practical challenges of early fatherhood. Shannon was subsequently successful in his studies.
The financial challenges Shannon encountered during his course were not sufficient to derail his goals. His story points to the social capital he gained from his mother and extended family, and his motivation to ‘set myself up’ given his family responsibilities. Finances were an enduring problem for him though, particularly the ‘hidden’ costs associated with university study such as posting books back to the library, attending residential schools, and participating in work-based placements.
It is important to be aware of the services offered in your institution and consider whether these are sufficient to help retain students (and if not, what you could do to improve them), along with what part you could play in improving students’ awareness of their availability. Assistance in the form of equity bursaries and practicum or placement bursaries, emergency grants, travel and conference grants, as well as government and institutional scholarships, are important examples of the financial supports that students may not know about. Scholarships, however small in monetary value, can be affirming for students (Aitken et al., 2004). If some of these do not exist in your institution, consider whether you and your colleagues should be advocating for the provision of bursaries or similar forms of support.
Research on students’ use of support services reveals that their ‘help- seeking’ behaviour is complex. One US study found that ‘low income’ students differed from their ‘higher income’ colleagues in their use of the support services set up to assist their retention, mainly because they were not aware these supports existed or how they could benefit from them (Engle and O’Brien, 2007). Kinnear et al. (2008) found that individual students’ background, attributes, beliefs, behaviours, values, goals, and experiences coalesced to create either ‘proactive’ or ‘reluctant’ help- seekers. The student/staff relationship determined whether or not students sought help. Students rarely sought help from unfamiliar or unapproachable staff and needed to ‘feel confident in the helper’s interest and ability to assist them’ (p. 10). There was also evidence that students of non-English-speaking backgrounds and first generation students may be particularly reliant on effective help-seeking strategies, while international students generally rely more on support from teaching staff and distant family than on peer support from local students.
Similarly, Clegg et al. (2006) reported that students seek help from a wide range of university staff with whom they come in contact (e.g. technicians). Frequently reluctance to seek help is ‘combined with an immense determination to succeed’, and students may ‘appear to preserve their esteem by using informal supports and by digging deep into the self and their own sense of personal project in coming to university’ (p. 102); they may not want to be seen as ‘not coping’ (p. 111). Family support is often seen as ‘natural’, not needing to be asked for. Note, for example, Sesh returning to live at her family’s home to save money. Clegg et al. suggest that institutional policy should build on what is known about the strategies and resources already available to students rather than appearing to individualise or pathologise problems. Students’ choices about help-seeking hence need to be respected; the key responsibility of staff is to ensure that students know of the range of services available to them.
The nature of students’ help-seeking behaviours again reinforces the importance of a proactive, ‘everybody’s business’ approach (Kift et al., 2010; Thomas et al., 2002), because students are more likely to seek help ‘from staff and their immediate learning community with whom they have developed a working/positive relationship’ (Kinnear et al., 2008: 10), if they seek assistance at all.
Sesh and Shannon were both students who did not use this support, in Sesh’s case because of previous adverse experiences. Her comments on academic literacy issues (gaining help in forming an argument, and understanding the importance of referencing) have important implications for ensuring this assistance is provided in ways that are meaningful for students.
While university strategies to assist transition or support retention can help avert attrition, there may be times when such intervention is not enough. As Kuh et al. (2007: 3) note: ‘There are limits as to what colleges and universities can realistically do to help students overcome years of educational disadvantages.’ They see retention in terms of student engagement and while engagement consists of a combination of student behavioural and institutional factors among others, they suggest that most institutions can foster greater levels of student engagement and success by implementing promising policies and effective educational practices based on research (Kuh et al., 2007). The important relationship between retention and student engagement is supported by Australian studies on student engagement (e.g. James et al., 2010; Mclnnis 2001; Radloff and Coates, 2010), as well as studies elsewhere (e.g. Tinto, 2012; Yorke, 1999).
By the time Sesh and Shannon committed to the study outlined in their stories they had developed clear goals and organisational strategies to support them, suggesting their increasing maturity as adult learners. For Shannon this involved juggling work and family responsibilities, a feature that often characterises these learners. We will focus further on adult learning in Chapters 5 and 6. In addition to the implications for student support considered above, Sesh and Shannon’s stories highlight strategies that can be undertaken by teaching staff to increase student engagement and improve the likelihood of retention. For Sesh, peers in her course were important as a source of support, information, and guidance, rather than formal university services. Building group work into classroom and study activities provides a forum for students to develop relationships with each other. Both Sesh and Shannon also found work-based placements integral to the development of their identities as learners. You might think about what work-based learning opportunities, or other authentic learning experiences, are available to or possible for your students. Sesh also comments on the value of freedom to choose subjects and assignments, which provides further avenues for tailoring students’ learning to their interests and increasing their engagement. In addition, her experiences of feedback highlight its importance in guiding and directing students. Prompt feedback, sensitively delivered, can play an important role in supporting students. This can extend beyond the classroom to broader aspects of their progress and involve both teaching and professional staff.
Summary
In this chapter, we introduced Sesh and Shannon as two highly self- directed learners, neither of whom drew on university support services. Both had previously attempted university unsuccessfully as school- leavers, prior to enrolling and successfully completing their current course. Both students lived in the country some distance from the university and enrolled to study as off-campus students. As adults, and in Shannon’s case, with family and financial responsibilities, the advantages of studying by distance also involved considerable expenses, in addition to the stress of organising work and life to complete long unpaid work placements for the course. Both students report the central role of family in their educational success. For Sesh, parental pressure to succeed was initially critical in driving her. She also received practical support in the form of accommodation from her parents. In Shannon’s case, his mother’s decision to study as an older adult, and then her achievements in her new career, made her an important role model.
A question raised by their stories is whether the institutions they attended earlier responded adequately to their situations so that they could have continued and successfully completed their initial studies. We have encouraged you to think about this in terms of the transition issues facing many school-leaver students from non-traditional backgrounds, along with other implications of their stories relating to retention and engagement.
Chapter 3: discussion topics
1. As part of an ‘everybody’s business’ approach to student support, what could you do in your role to improve student access to assistance with the practical aspects of coming to, and remaining at, university, such as accommodation and financial support?
2. How are students currently assisted with academic skills, such as writing essays, in your institution? What could you do in your role to improve the way that academic support services such as these are offered so that they are better organised to meet students’ perceived needs?
3. If you have a teaching role, what are three (or more) strategies that you are not using now that you could implement to increase students’ engagement?